On today’s menu: Cookwork. A Social Network for Professional Chefs.

Le Chef suggestion for today is: Cookwork– a social network for professional chefs and food students all around the world – “the first holistic web portal for chefs” , as they say – where they can share recipes, get job announcements and talk about common interests; like food preparation and safety, nutrition, wines, artisan foods or even restaurant management. It’s a closed social network and Cookwork will verify your credentials, assuring that only peers are there.

The sites main motto is “because they love food“, so the network is built around it, where the recipes area is one of the most participated, with lots of good ideas and filters (meal moments, difficulties and outlets), chefs can get the ingredients, equipment and, of course, instructions to prepare it. Also, other chefs can comment on recipes. Chef’s also get news, like hot trends for cocktails and beer or just plain gossip chitchat.

As a community they have their own forums, the “round table”, where they talk about almost everything related to their lifestyle. Careers is the cherry on top of this exquisite social network, having job opportunities and some Cookwork advice. One of my favorites is the “escape into the wild”, but chefs can get detailed information on every step in going solo and having a restaurant.

Cookwork is a Portuguese foodservice internet startup company, with offices in the US, launched this year but already have a few hundred users (remember that they all get their credentials checked), where for instance, in the US, they’re at least 1 million probable chefs with a 350 billion dollar market. Right now most of their users are from US, UK and Italy. They launched with their own funds in January 2009 and took them one year to develop Cookwork. Yet, for me isn’t clear on how they’ll monetize the network. Probably with the “shopping heaven”, some kind of shopping place for tools and other material for chefs.